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Moscow Buyers Club: Russia’s AIDS Patients Work Together To Overcome Medication Shortages

Posted on October 08, 2017

Source: RadioFreeEurope

Moscow Buyers Club: Russia’s AIDS Patients Work Together To Overcome Medication Shortages

"Many of the posts on the website Pereboi.ru -- a chat room for Russians diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS -- are alarming.

'Today my husband went to the clinic and they told him that they gave out all the medicine on Monday,' wrote Nelli from Ufa. 'He went downtown and they told him they have no medicine and they aren't getting any.'

'I feel awful, but they won't give me any treatment. They said there is a shortage of antiretroviral treatment in Tomsk Oblast and they are only giving it to the most dire cases,' wrote Marina from Tomsk. 'I am raising a child, and I don't want to die.'

Problems with the distribution of HIV/AIDS medications have become endemic in Russia, forcing patients to increasingly rely on one another to get the treatments they need. The situation in Russia in 2017 has come to resemble the plot of the Hollywood movie Dallas Buyers Club, which was set in the United States in the 1980s."

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